In recent years, braided synthetic ropes have replaced steel cables in many applications due to their relatively low weight, high strength, flexibility, resistance to corrosion, and electrically insulating properties. These applications include, among others, terrestrial applications such as tower staying, vehicle winching, and rigging, and marine and offshore applications such as deepwater mooring, deepwater lifting, oceanographic lifting and coring, seismic towing, salvaging, vessel towing, and commercial fishing.
Like many load-transmitting components, wear limits the useful life of synthetic ropes, and relatively long ropes (for example, ropes having lengths of a few hundred meters to several kilometers) can be extremely expensive to replace. In some cases, one or more sections of the rope wear out more quickly and reach the end of their life before other sections. To avoid the expense of replacing the entire rope in these cases, a relatively high-wear section can be removed and the remaining two sections joined back together. That is, the strands of the two remaining rope sections are interwoven to provide a physical connection between the two sections. However, ropes that pass over sheaves (for example, in deepwater lifting applications) are not typically spliced in the above manner because they tend to work loose from each other. As such, the entire rope may be replaced even if it includes several sections with relatively little wear.
As such, a need exists for a spliced rope apparatus and method for splicing ropes that address the above drawbacks.